How do you move past the pain and grief?

[mjh8808]

I haven't been on bpdfamily in a while, school plus work has kept me insanely busy. A little background about me, my mom has MOST of the BPD traits but is undiagnosed. She has been very controlling my whole life, abusive physically and emotionally, and has tried ruining my life. I have basically been her mom my whole life. I can remember being 3yrs old and begging her not to commit suicide because her latest boyfriend dumped her. Long story short, I finally got up the nerve to move 3 hours away to college and am making a life for myself. I have been promoted to management at the chick fil a I work at in just 4 short months. I am seeing a counselor though the school who is a LSW and has worked with children of BPD parents before. This brings me to what I want to talk about and get feed back on.

I seem to be stuck in counseling. Ive had dad issues too... .   serious physical abuse then abandonment. In 2010 he came back into my life and for a year he honestly seemed to have changed. He is not abusive anymore, however he is not very consistent in my life and I feel like Im having to be the mature one in the relationship. Im so tired of inconsistency! I cant seem to get past the feelings of not being loved genuinely by either of them and trusting myself that I am not overreacting or being too harsh. My T says it takes time to grieve, but how do you grieve people who are not dead? Me and my T have gone back and forth about me expressing to my dad how I really feel since we both know my mom isn't going to change. But I don't think I can open myself up to him that much. Sure, he would probably change for a while but then go right back to his inconsistencies. I just had major hip surgery(at age 24 mind you) and he has only called once to check on me. I feel stupid because im not a little kid anymore, but I still want/need my parents but it seems like I will never have that. I just don't know how to move past the pain and grief... .   I know that I cant change them so I have to change myself, but it feels like just when im looking up, the grief hits me again. Everything else in my life is going great, but if people only knew how I felt inside... .  

sorry this is more of a rant, but maybe someone could tell me how they manage the pain and grief or move past it... .  

[XL]

What type of therapy are you in? Sometimes talk therapy can become circular. Behavioral therapy (like a lot of the tools in the workshops DEARMAN, etc) help you build new ways of communicating.

It's really important to start building healthy relationships in the outside world, be it a hobby, skills, new friends, etc. You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends. A surplus of positive interactions in other areas will help balance out the negatives in your family life.

You know the limitations you're up against. If you don't think your dad is going to change, you're probably the best witness with the best evidence for that.

Have you tried any art therapy? There's a good book called The Artist's Way. It's geared towards creative types, but there are a lot of good healing & grief processing assignments built in.

[mjh8808]

Thank you for responding to my post.

I believe it is a bit of both. She does let me get out my feelings and talk but she also challenges my way of thinking. I have only been going since August.

And see that's the thing... .   I don't trust myself and my feelings. Plus if I do what I feel is best for me then I feel guilty or that maybe I'm overreacting. My T tells me I make very healthy decisions but I just don't feel like I do :/

[GeekyGirl]

Therapy is a lot of work. That's a dirty little secret that no one really told me until I started really diving into my issues. It's not uncommon to get into a rut and feel like you're not making progress... .   but you are. You're starting to see it in other areas of your life through your promotion, managing school and work, and asserting your independance. All of those things required you to make some tough decisions and branch out from your parents.

At the same time, it's very sad to grieve the loss of a relationship or the relationship that you thought you had. Your T is right--you are grieving, even though it feels really weird to grieve when there hasn't been an actual death. It's a loss, though, and you're processing years of abuse. That's very tough to do.

In time, you'll start to trust yourself and your feelings. Have you talked to your T about feeling like you're stuck?

[Cordelia]

I would say just give yourself a lot of time.  It is terribly difficult to process the loss of parents who didn't take care of you the way you needed them to, and who still don't.  I know in my case I also had to fight through the feeling that I shouldn't be angry about any of this or sad, that feeling this grief was weak and pathetic and that indulging in it was wallowing in endless pain and self-contempt.  For me developing self-compassion was the crucial turning point.  Because who's to say you should be making progress any faster than you are?  You've accomplished a huge amount, moving away, building your own life, and discovering that there those who recognize your strength and abilities outside your family.  That's really amazing - some never reach this point!  Take good care of yourself the way you would a friend who had suffered the way you did.  You wouldn't try to rush her through her pain, would you?  You'd probably just sit with her and be kind to her and give her the time she needs to express to you what she went through and how she felt about it.  The pain and grief don't really go away, because they are your response to what happened to you.  What changed for me was that rather than it bothering me that I still felt grief and pain and judging myself so harshly for having these natural human feelings was that I accepted that I felt that way, that I had gone through some really difficult times early in life.  And having done that I was able to broaden my perspective and see that even though I had dark memories and pain that would probably always be with me, my present reality was much brighter, and I had a lot to be happy about and grateful for right now.  And my current reality has started to assume much more importance than my past, and I no longer see myself primarily as someone who was abandoned by a BPD mother and neglected by an alcoholic father, but as someone who is right now forging her own path through life and finding happiness and surrounded by love.  It isn't that the past didn't happen or that it didn't hurt, it just isn't the most important thing about me any more. 

It just takes a lot of time.  Give yourself credit for all that you've accomplished, and respect the pace of the natural process of healing.  You instinctively know how to heal emotionally, you just need to give yourself the time and space and protection to let that process take its course.   

[OnlyChild]

I find these messages to be helpful.  We are not alone in this.   It's a really complex thing for a child to experience.   I find it hard to believe myself sometimes and I lived through it... .   I cannot imagine how foreign this must seem to those on the outside looking in.   We were all there once too ourselves:  on the outside looking in with disbelief that our perception is what it is.   "Confusing" just doesn't seem to be a big enough word to define our situations.

I think also giving yourself permission to grieve the childhood that you missed out on is also good.   We were ripped off, and we have a right to be upset about that. 

The uplifting thing about these messages though is that we have an opportunity to re-write our scripts---to start over, the way we want to start over, and to be treated the way we want to be treated.

Take time for the grieving... .   there's lots to grieve.